HQ is a trivia game where you answer trivia questions to win a cash prize. The trivia questions cover a range of topics including sports, entertainment, pop culture, geography, health, vocabulary and more. If you get any of the questions wrong, you are out of the game. If you answer all the questions right, you and the other winners split the prize.

HQ is a mobile app that you download from the Apple AppStore or Google Play. After downloading the app, you create a user account and play the game at 3 PM ET weekdays and at 9 PM ET everyday.

Depending on the day, the prize can be either $2,500 or $15,000 dollars. As the game grows in popularity, HQ has been raising the cash prize.

The game starts with easy questions and around a million players. However, usually by the fourth question, HQ will throw in what they call a “Savage” question that knocks out a lot of people from the game. Usually by the last question, only a couple of hundred players are left. The winners split the cash prize.

So what makes HQ different and how does this change broadcasting?

Traditional game shows on broadcast television use the following format:

A trivia game is played by several, pre-selected people and moderated by a game show host in a TV studio.

Sometimes the game is played in front of a studio audience but this audience is not the ultimate consumer of the show.

After the show is over, it is later broadcasted to a television audience, who is the intended audience.

To the broadcast audience there is really nothing “live” about the game.

This format was first established back in the 1940’s starting with the first broadcast game show called Truth or Consequences.

The format worked well for many years on broadcast television because it was similar to it’s predecessor, radio. However, broadcasting which means to broadly cast a show to large audience is a one way medium (you can only watch or listen). Ratings for broadcast shows grew as televisions became affordable to millions of people.

However, this began to change in the late 1990’s with the introduction of high-speed internet in the home. From this point forward, the size of television audiences (including game shows) began to drop with maybe the exception of live television sports (but even that’s starting to change).

Today, people don’t see the same value of traditional television and have begun "cord cutting".

For broadcasting to be a profitable business, broadcasters need advertisers and advertisers generally sell their products and services to the 18+ adult segment. With the introduction of high-speed internet, the coveted 18+ adult segment spent less time watching broadcast television. Take a look where they spending more time now:

According to Nielsen Total Audience reports, 18+ adults are spending more time on the internet, smartphones and online games.

So what makes the Internet, smart phones and online games more compelling? For starters, this medium is a bi-directional technology and attracted billions of people. The billions of people are online all the time, everyone watches, everyone participates, people “Like" things, people love to comment and they share with each other. You just don’t get this with broadcast television.

Henceforth, the 18+ adult segment has now lost interest with broadcast television and If they do watch TV, they probably have their mobile devices in their hand and split their attention between the TV and their mobile device.

Now, let’s fast forward to 2018 and see how HQ is redefining the broadcast model.

With HQ, the broadcast game show has been completely turned upside down. The game is live, the game show host is live and the audience are now the players. Everyone feels the excitement when answering the question correctly and the agony of defeat when they get it wrong. The game makes it hard for the audience to divert their attention away or else they can lose the game.

Let’s stop and think about how different that this compared to even the internet model from the late 1990’s. HQ has created a model where a large audience simultaneously watches and interacts with a live video broadcast. Until a few years ago, live video broadcasts were hard to pull off. Slow mobile internet service and live video software was non-existiant or too expensive. On top of that, live video internet broadcasting was still a one way medium (you could only watch and not interact). With HQ, a new definition of broadcasting has been born.

So how does HQ grow this new medium and make it a profitable business? First they need to solve some challenges:

Challenge 1: The Unfinished Business Model

Today, it appears that HQ is not generating revenue. There is no fee for players to play the game and there are no commercials or sponsors paying for the production.

But like any business, HQ does incur costs. Here's a rough estimate of the costs:

Cost Type

Estimated Annual Cost (in US dollars)

Prize Money

(as of Jan 2018)

$2,340,000

Labor

(including software engineers, researchers, design and production people and game show hosts to tell the jokes)

A conservative estimate is that HQ will need about $13 million dollars per year to continue operating.

Some potential ways for HQ to generate revenue:

Sponsorships or commercials - HQ could sell sponsorships that would be mentioned during the game. For example, “Today’s game brought to you by GEICO”.

Product placement - sell advertisers the ability to place branded questions into the game. For example, “Which of the following is not a Budweiser product?"

In-app purchases - Allow users to buy an extra life allowing them to get one question wrong during the game.

Licensing - HQ could license their game software to other companies to use for their own game shows.

A new undiscovered revenue method - like all good startups, HQ could identify a new revenue model as they build their platform. For example, Google figured out how to sell ads in their search results. This model which didn’t exist before search engines came along and is now a billions of dollars business.

Challenge 2: Audience Burnout

The HQ app was released in August 2017 and the number of daily active players has been growing ever since. This growth has been fueled by the uniqueness of the game, people inviting their friends to play and the steady increase in news and celebrity coverage. But eventually, this growth will slow or decline when people get tired of the game.

If everything stays the same, HQ could follow the same trajectory as the successful TV game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”. Broadcasted on the ABC television in August 1999, “Millionaire" had a specular growth curve and hit about 30 million viewers within weeks of it’s launch. Once ABC knew they had a hit on their hands, they increased the frequency of Millionaire to five nights a week. However, this overexposure and static game format caused the audience to quickly tire of the game and within two TV seasons it lost a majority of its viewers Wikipedia.

To prevent burnout, HQ needs to keep the audience interested. Some ways to change the current trivia game:

Add guest hosts - Recently, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the game which was a great idea. HQ should continue to bring on interesting hosts.

Increase the prize money - As more people join the game, the number of winners increases and the payout per winner goes down (who’s excited to win a $1.66). Like Lotto games, people don't play when the prize money is low.

Use different types of questions - Today’s questions are all multiple choice, text-based questions. HQ could ask the players to do other things like name this tune, pick the correct picture or use other types of questions to keep it interesting.

Create a new game under the HQ brand. More on this idea in a minute...

Challenge 3: The Company Name and the Trivia Game Name Are Too Tightly Connected

Today, the name of the company is HQ Trivia and this name is strongly associated to the current trivia game. Think about it, there's no other name for the current game besides HQ. If HQ released another game, what would they call it? HQ 2.0? This naming convention makes it hard for HQ to introduce new and different games.

Branding and Positioning Recommendations:

HQ needs to quickly position the company separately from their games. I would keep using HQ as the company name and position it as a broadcast gaming platform. This approach has been successfully in traditional broadcasting. For example, if all Netflix shows were called Netflix, it would difficult for people to talk about the individual shows on that platform (for example, "Orange is the New Black”, “Stranger Things”, “House of Cards”). Now's the time for HQ to make this change.

Challenge 4: Competition and Copy Cats

Since the HQ audience is growing at a record pace, other companies are taking notice and will quickly adopt these broadcast strategies (ahem, cough, Facebook). Competitors with a larger user base can quickly catch up and surpass HQ.

"We needed to achieve escape velocity, we needed to grow so quickly that it would discourage anybody from even trying to compete with us. And so if you, if you could scale incredibly fast, on the one hand you have to race really hard to scale fast, but then the benefit if you do it is that you’re sort of achieving escape velocity from the black hole that is, that is hyper competition.” - Peter Thiel, Masters of Scale Podcast

The metric Peter was referring to in the podcast was the number of users signing up and using the product. This metric needed to see exponential growth and Thiel and Reid refer to it as the “X-Factor”. HQ has been hitting X-Factor growth, going from 0 users to 1.6 million users in six months. However, HQ needs to keep growing this number.

A few growth strategies:

Continue to create brand awareness for HQ and position HQ as the premier broadcast game network. Continue to reenforce the brand visually throughout the game and by the game show hosts. For example, the hosts call the players “HQuties".

As hinted to earlier, HQ needs to create more game and different game genres. These games could be played at different times of the day. For example, a music game would be interesting. A new take on "Name that Tune”.

HQ could open up their platform and create a software development kit for other software developers to use. Amazon did this back in 2006 and called it Amazon Web Services (AWS). Today, a huge number of developers pay Amazon to use this AWS for their websites and mobile applications.

Challenge 5: Which Path Will The HQ Founders Choose: Sell in Near Term or Go Big and Stay Independent?

The HQ founders, Rus Yusupovwere and Colin Kroll were successful with their last venture, a mobile app called Vine. Vine allowed people to record and share short videos. At the time, sharing videos on mobile was not easy and other mobile social mobile apps like Facebook, SnapChat and Instagram didn’t provide this capability so Vine became an instant hit.

Once Vine was at Twitter, a decision was made to not integrate Vine into the existing Twitter app and keep it as a separate product. Eventually, Snapchat and Instagram copied the video sharing capability and integrated it into their existing apps. Since these apps had more users than Twitter, eventually people stopped using Vine. in 2016, due to lower marketshare and active users, Twitter decided to shut down the Vine app.

So what will Rus and Colin do this time around? Will they try to make HQ the next big social platform or will they sell again?

It probably depends on the next challenge…

Challenge 6: Need More Funding

To date, HQ has been funded by its co-founders. However, to keep things going and hit escape velocity, HQ will need a lot more funding to solve the challenges mentioned above. Recently, Recode has reported that HQ has been seeking additional funding.

As 2017 comes to an end, it looks like another successful year for voice assistant devices targeted for use in the home. Unit sales for the Amazon Echo and Google Home are estimated to be in the millions.

Today, surveys show that the Amazon Echo/Alexa has approximately 70% market share of voice assistant devices and Google Home has 29%.

Soon joining the fray are the Apple HomePod and the Sonos One. The new entrants will try and grab their share of the 325 million households in the United States.

As the competition for the household becomes entrenched, late entrants need to strategically think where to go to next.

So, the question is... What is the next market opportunity for the voice assistant device?

We need to think of places that have the same qualities as the household:

A voice interface is the preferred method compared to touching a screen. (Why get off the couch?)

You have the undivided attention of the user for long periods of time.

It's easier to place a standalone device into the environment compared to integrating with existing service providers or technologies.

We need a large number of places to put these devices (think in the tens of millions).

And most of all, none of the existing competitors have grabbed market share in these locations just yet!

So where is this magical place?

It's the 263 million cars in the United States and the 1.2 billion cars in the world

Here's why:

There is a huge problem with the way automobiles and mobile devices work together and it makes so much sense for voice assistants to tackle it now:

There are too many distracted drivers on the road today. Distracted driving claimed 3,477 lives in 2015 alone.

People do not unplug - even with new laws and all the public safety messages, people are still holding and touching their phones will driving.

Mobile phones were not designed for safe use in the car:

Mobile phones have screens which cause people to take their eyes off the road (large or small screens, makes no difference).

Mobile phones have keyboards and touch interfaces that require precision accuracy to make them work.

Siri and the Google Assistant on your phone require button pressing and dont have the same quality microphones as a voice assistant devices do.

Millions of cars do not have the technology to make mobile device usage safer.

Bluetooth is becoming more and more available but still missing in older cars. Plus, it's really hard to retrofit a car without it.

Newer model cars now have voice recognition but that's only in the last four years and usually costs $300 dollars or more.

Existing car technologies like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are designed to work with built-in automobile screens. Plus, they were initially designed before voice assistance devices really took off.

And most importantly, it will take at least 10 years before most cars have either an Android Auto or Apple CarPlay built-in.

The market potential is huge

Just read the latest US Census and industry research data and you will see that there is a large number of vehicles where standalone voice assistant devices could be targeted:

As of 2016, there are 263 million cars in the US and over 1.2 billion cars globally according to a recent IHS Market survey.

One out of every four vehicles in the U.S. were built before the year 2000 (around 65 million). That's way before Bluetooth, Apple Carplay or Android Auto were introduced. And that number does not consider the cars sold after 2000 that still do not have these technologies installed.

The average car age is 11.4 years old.

The US Census's 2015 American Community Survey shows that the average American commute crept up to 26.4 minutes in 2015. That's a lot of time in the car each day.

Voice assistance devices can be quickly designed for the car

Tech companies just need to make a safer version of their voice assistant device for the car. Here's a list of design requirements that come to mind:

Works in all cars (not just the newly manufactured ones).

Has a built-in speaker and microphone (put a checkmark in the done column).

Easier and safer to use than taking your mobile phone out while driving.

Easier than putting on a Bluetooth earpiece. (So 10 years ago!)

Needs to be easy to set up and fits securely to prevent flying around when the car is starting, stopping and turning.

Allows the driver to say commands, ask questions and get information without taking hands off the wheel and eyes off the road.

Has access to the internet and cellular services (This will be a tougher one since it needs integration without making it expensive or hard to setup).

The device can make or receive phone calls, text messages, driving directions and get information from the internet.

Priced appropriately so many people can afford to buy it.

While there are many more requirements (e.g. Plugs into the car's ODB II port or has an application development software development kit), the list above contains the most important requirements (think safety).

Oh yeah, one more thing... the product marketing should resonate well towards existing car owners.

For example, here's a potential description of the product:

DriveSafe by [Insert Manufacturer Here], the voice-activated companion that lets you safely make phone calls, receive texts, get driving directions, and much, much more. No headsets, no modifying your dashboard, just plug it into your cigarette lighter and it’s ready to go.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts:

What do you think of the approach?

Which company do you think is best positioned to do this?

What other design constraints need to be considered?

Leave a comment to get the conversation started.

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Years ago, I use to promote a number of night clubs in New York. One trick I learned from the successful night club owners was to create a line outside even though there was no body inside.

Years ago, I use to promote a number of night clubs in New York. One trick I learned from the successful night club owners was to create a line outside even though there was no body inside.

The line at Studio 54 – the king of night clubs

The owners would keep looking outside and waited for the line to get long enough so that the door men could let people in at a slow pace and it would take an hour or two before the crowd made it through the door ! On top of that, people use to walk or drive by at 11 PM at night and say “What’s going on there?”. This created even more excitement and more people want to get in. To cut the line, people would try to bribe the doormen and other tricks.

In a nightclub, people like to be treated like cattle. Think about it, do you want to go to a night club where there is no one inside or no one is waiting to go in?

Recently, I noticed the same trick being used by technology start ups. Mailbox which a new email app for gmail that displays your email with a post card metaphor (very similar to the Flipboard, the successful social reader) created lots of excitement for their app by making people wait and then telling them how many people were in front and behind them to get the app. I like this approach and I think it should be labeled the “Studio 54 effect”.

Waiting to Get An Invite for Mailbox

Well, the trick seemed to work once again, today, it was announced that Dropbox bought Mailbox. Rumor has it, Dropbox paid $100 million for Mailbox. I wonder what other tricks we can use out of the old night club play book? Ladies night or how about getting your name on the guest list? I would love to hear your feedback…

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I just upgraded my MacBook Pro from Lion to Mountain Lion. I read about the new notifications center feature and wanted to add my Twitter account so I can get Twitter notifications. However, after clicking on the notifications center icon and also looking at system preferences – notification settings, I could

I just upgraded my MacBook Pro from Lion to Mountain Lion. I read about the new notifications center feature and wanted to add my Twitter account so I can get Twitter notifications. However, after clicking on the notifications center icon and also looking at system preferences – notification settings, I could not determine where you add your Twitter account. After some more poking around I finally found it. Its under “Mail, Contacts & Calendars” system preference. Not every intuitive.

Once you click on the “Mail, Contacts and Calendars” icon, a new screen pops up that shows your existing mail, calendar and other accounts. To add Twitter, click on the plus icon on the bottom left side of the screen. Next, click on the Twitter logo on the right side of the screen. You then will be asked to supply your Twitter username and password. Once you signin, the notification center will then receive Twitter notifications.

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Steps

First navigate to the folder to which you want to limit the search.

Hit Command-F, or in the menu, go to File -> Find. The “tab bar” at the top of the search criteria window now shows the folder you are currently in as one of the options.

Hit Command-F, or in the menu, go to File -> Find. The “tab bar” at the top of the search criteria window now shows the folder you are currently in as one of the options.

Select the folder, and then you can (as always) specify the other search criteria to your liking.

The results of the filters should show below.

Hit the Save button, and you now have a Smart Folder restricted to a specific folder (and its sub-folders).

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On January 24, 2012, SIFMA released the first Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) sample file to the industry for development and testing purposes. The file contains 2,700 entities that are in scope for the CFTC Swaps Data Reporting rules that are expected to be in place by July 16, 2012.

On January 24, 2012, SIFMA released the first Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) sample file to the industry for development and testing purposes. The file contains 2,700 entities that are in scope for the CFTC Swaps Data Reporting rules that are expected to be in place by July 16, 2012.

In the last month, I have been playing with the JQuery’s Mobile library and trying to use it in my “To Do List” app that I use for work. Overall, its pretty easy to implement and use. It took about an hour to read the docs and code a

In the last month, I have been playing with the JQuery’s Mobile library and trying to use it in my “To Do List” app that I use for work. Overall, its pretty easy to implement and use. It took about an hour to read the docs and code a simple example. The features I have been using include the list views and form fields.

Once I coded my app, I tested it on my Droid 2 phone and my Kindle Fire and overall it looks pretty good.

Some things that I wish that JQuery mobile had out of the box:

A date and time widget

Autocomplete

Better control of the shape and size of submit buttons

Drag and drop

I imagine these features are forth coming.

Once I get my app a little more workable, I will post some screenshots.

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Since I work in the Information Technology field as a consultant, I buy a large number of computer books. Amazon’s Kindle is great for someone like me who doesn’t have the ability to carry many books with me (1 or 2 max) or has a consistent office or

Since I work in the Information Technology field as a consultant, I buy a large number of computer books. Amazon’s Kindle is great for someone like me who doesn’t have the ability to carry many books with me (1 or 2 max) or has a consistent office or desk to store my books. I already subscribe to O’Reilly’s Safari Online Book Service to get access to computer books online. Safari is great because they have many monthly subscription that gives you access to 5 or more books each month. The thing I don’t like about Safari is that you have to be connected to the internet to use the service. Usually, I read during my commute to work and O’Reilly’s Safari is not available during this time. However, Amazon’s Kindle does let me read books without a connection to the internet. So Kindle gets another plus from me.

Sounds good, right? Well one small problem, I’ve noticed while searching the Amazon Kindle store that some of the largest computer book publishers are missing from the Kindle store including O’Reilly, Manning, Wiley’s Dummies Books and Microsoft. I’m hoping that these publishers will eventually allow Amazon to sell their books on the Kindle.

I’ll send this question over to Amazon to see if they have any plans for adding these publishers in the near future. Stay tuned.

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Here are some features, I hope will be included in a future version of the Amazon Kindle hardware or software:

Keyword Search Your Books – There are times where I wanted to find a particular set of keywords in my Kindle library. Unfortunately, Kindle does not have this ability. Maybe it

Here are some features, I hope will be included in a future version of the Amazon Kindle hardware or software:

Keyword Search Your Books – There are times where I wanted to find a particular set of keywords in my Kindle library. Unfortunately, Kindle does not have this ability. Maybe it will show up in the next software update. Since Kindle is running on a Linux platform, it should be very easy for Amazon to add a search engine, maybe a stripped down version of A9.

Skip to Next Article in the Wall Street Journal – I noticed while reading the Wall Street Journal that you can’t skip to the next article from all of the pages. The feature only exists on the first page of the article. Let’s say your on page 3 of an article and you get bored, you have to hit the Back button and then scroll down to the next article in list and then click the scroll wheel. There should be a menu option or a link on every page that will get you to the next or previous article.

A Better Case for the Kindle – I use the existing Kindle case today, but the Kindle constantly falls out of it. The little tab that’s supposed to hold it in place doesn’t work to well. I bet there will be an after market set of cases for the Kindle. Amazon needs to improve this in the next version.

Reduce the Size of the Next and Previous Page Buttons – I have seen this request a number of times already on the Kindle customer reviews. There are many times where I unintentionally hit the next or previous button while holding the Kindle.

As time goes on, I will add to this list. Does any one have any other suggestions?

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Last week, I noticed that my Amazon Kindle was not updating even when I had a good wireless connection. I tried searching the Amazon support site but I couldn’t find a solution. The Amazon Kindle support site is very lacking right now. Here’s what I did to eventually

Last week, I noticed that my Amazon Kindle was not updating even when I had a good wireless connection. I tried searching the Amazon support site but I couldn’t find a solution. The Amazon Kindle support site is very lacking right now. Here’s what I did to eventually fix the problem.

Restart the Kindle:

Go to the home screen on the Kindle by pressing the home button.

Click on Menu, and then Settings.

On the Settings page, click on Menu and then select Restart.

After the Kindle restarts, go back to the Home screen and click Menu.

Click on Check for New Items.

This seemed to do it for me. About 5 minutes later, the latest issue of the Wall Street Journal was on my Kindle.

This problem seemed to happen when I had my Kindle in sleep mode for a few days.

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I’ve had the Amazon Kindle for about two weeks now and I’ve noticed a couple of ways to extend the battery life. Here’s a couple of tips:

Don’t use the sleep mode when you decide to take a break from reading. I believe the Kindle is

I’ve had the Amazon Kindle for about two weeks now and I’ve noticed a couple of ways to extend the battery life. Here’s a couple of tips:

Don’t use the sleep mode when you decide to take a break from reading. I believe the Kindle is still using power in sleep mode. The user guide states that the Kindle is not consuming power but I believe there are other parts inside the Kindle that do. When I put the Kindle in sleep mode, I get about 24-48 hours of battery life. If I turn the Kindle completely off, I have been getting 5-7 days worth of battery life.

If you have a subscription to a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal on the Kindle, it makes more sense to turn the wireless connection on for a few minutes to get the new edition of the Journal rather than leaving the wireless connection on and putting the Kindle in sleep mode. Battery life is cut short if the wireless connection is left on for any extended period of time. I noticed it takes about 5 minutes or less of wireless time to get the new issue of the Wall Street Journal. I tend to turn the wireless on in the morning and turn it off about 5 minutes later.

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We just came back from our cruise on Royal Caribbean. We had an great time.

We reached our first port, Labadee, Haiti on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. Labadee is a private area that is owned and managed by Royal Caribbean.

We just came back from our cruise on Royal Caribbean. We had an great time.

We reached our first port, Labadee, Haiti on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. Labadee is a private area that is owned and managed by Royal Caribbean.

When the ship gets to the port, the crew begins unloading food, drinks and ice from the cruise ship. This is prevent anyone from getting any stomach illnesses from the local water supply.

Here are some pictures from Labadee, Haiti:

One of the coolest excursions on Labadee is the Dragon Tail zip line. You start from high above the ocean and zip down a cable for at least 400 yards. For part of the ride, you are basically 3 feet above the water. I took a picture from the ship to give you a good prospective of how long it is. Sick!